Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)

“I can imagine,” she said, softly.

“I’d prefer you not.” Devil gave a little growl.

Her eyes went wide. Was it possible he was . . . jealous? No. That was impossible. Men like Devil did not experience jealousy over women like Felicity Faircloth.

He interrupted her thoughts. “What are you doing here?”

I came to learn how to win you. “I have an invitation.”

“Yes, and my sister is lucky I did not decide to put her into the Thames for extending it to you.” He was so close, and speaking so quietly in the shadows. “Now I’m going to ask you one more time, my lady, and you’d do best to tell me the truth. What are you doing here?”

For the first time in her life, as she heard the words my lady, she wondered what it would be to actually, honestly be someone’s lady. What might it be like to stand by his side? To touch him at will? To have him touch her?

She wanted it.

But instead of saying so, she said, softly, “You told me I couldn’t come to you any longer.”

He closed his eyes a breath longer than he should. “Yes.”

The reply grated. “You want to have your cake and eat it, too, and I shan’t allow it. You may either wash your hands of me or attempt to be my keeper, Devil, but you may not have both. And I’m not in the market for a keeper, anyway.”

“As you are standing in the middle of a Covent Garden bordello, I think you absolutely should be.”

“I am in the middle of a Covent Garden bordello because I am through with keepers, and there is a wide world of things I’d like to learn.”

“You should go home.”

“And what will I learn there, how to be a sacrificial lamb? How to marry a man I do not love? How to save a family I find I resent more than I should?”

Another low growl. “And what do you think this place will teach you?”

How to win you.

She swallowed. “All the things you refuse to.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you remember what I told you about passion, Felicity? I told you it is not like love—it is not patient or kind or whatever else Scripture likes to tell us. It is not want. It is need.”

Heat was coming off him in waves, wrapping itself around her with the promise of his words. What would it be like to be needed by him? Would it be as heady as how it felt to need him?

Because she was beginning to feel she needed him.

Surely that was why it had hurt so much when he’d left her.

Not because she loved him.

And then he added, “Passion comes with the worst of sin far more than it comes with the best of virtue.”

She heard the guilt in his words, and could not stop herself from lifting her hand, from putting her fingers to his cheek, wishing her gloves gone. Wishing she could feel him, skin to skin. “You know about sin, don’t you, Devil?”

He closed his eyes, leaning into her touch, sending a flood of pleasure to the core of her. “I know more about sin than you could possibly dream.”

“You told me once you could see my sin,” she said.

His beautiful eyes opened again, dark and knowing. “It is envy. You envy them their place. Their lives. Their acceptance in society.”

Perhaps that had been the case once. Perhaps there had been a time when she would have done anything to have the life the rest of society had. The happiness. The acceptance. No longer. “You’re wrong. That isn’t my sin.”

It was his turn to lift a hand. To touch her, his magnificently warm fingers against her cheek. “What is it, then?”

“It is want,” she said, the words barely there.

He cursed softly in the darkness, so close. So impossibly, beautifully close.

She pressed on, knowing she shouldn’t. Unable to stop. “I want you, Devil. I want to woo you. I want to be your flame. But I fear . . .” She paused, hating the way he watched her, as though he saw every word that was coming before she formed it. And perhaps he did. It didn’t matter. “I fear I am your moth, instead.”

His fingers moved, sliding to the back of her neck, into her hair, pulling her to him, and setting her on fire.

There was nothing tentative about the kiss—which only added to the heady fog that came over her with it. One moment, she was sure that he wanted to be rid of her, and the next, he was stealing her breath and thought and sanity, one hand cradling her face, the other arm wrapping around her back to keep her steady and pull her close to the heat of him. His mouth played over hers, sending wave after wave of sensation rocketing through her, rough and perfect, his tongue warm and lush against her own.

It might well be the last time he kissed her, and it was magnificent.

She could happily live here, in his arms, in this stairwell, forever.

Except a throat cleared behind him, from what seemed like a mile away, and panic flared at being discovered. She pushed at his shoulders, and Devil lifted his lips from hers in a slow, lingering disengagement, as though he had no reason whatsoever to disengage.

“What?” he asked, without looking away from her.

“You’ve broken my door,” Dahlia said from below.

He grunted his acknowledgment of the words, still not looking away from Felicity, whose cheeks were blazing. His free hand ran down her arm to take her hand in his.

“We’ve rooms for things like that, you know,” Dahlia added.

Devil’s beautiful lips flattened into a straight line. “Bugger off.” He leaned in and kissed Felicity again, quick and thorough, leaving her breathless when he lifted his head and said, “Come with me.”

As though she could do anything but that.

They climbed the stairs, one flight, and the next. He didn’t hesitate—didn’t slow his pace, not even when Felicity craned to see down the beautiful, mysterious hallways that promised adventure and sin. Instead, he led her higher and higher, Felicity’s heart pounding harder and harder until he stopped in an almost pitch-black narrow stairwell, with nowhere else to go.

He released her then and set his hands to the ceiling, rings gleaming in the darkness mere inches above his head, and pushed open an inlaid door, lifting himself up and out, leaving Felicity gaping at his beautiful body, silhouetted against the starlit sky.

When he reached back and offered her a hand, she did not hesitate, and he pulled her out into the night, where he reigned.

Chapter Twenty-Two

He took her to the rooftops.

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he should pack her into a hack and return her to Mayfair—untouched, to the home that had been in her family for generations. He knew he was wrong to bring her to this world that was all his and nothing of hers, that would do nothing but soil her with it.

But if Felicity’s sin was want, so was Devil’s. And Christ, he wanted her.

He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything, and Devil had spent much of his youth hungry and cold, poor and angry. He might have been able to resist his desire—but then she’d confessed her own: I want you. I want to be your flame . . . but I fear I am your moth instead.

And all Devil wished was to take her somewhere so they might burn together.

He closed the door after he pulled her up onto the roof of Grace’s club—rising from the task to discover her staring out into the night, the city below and the stars above, as clear as his view of the future.

The one he would spend without her.

But tonight, he would share this world with her, even as he knew he would regret it forever. How could he resist?

Especially when she reached up and removed the mask she’d been given inside, revealing herself to the warm night. She turned in a slow circle, eyes wide as she took it in. And then she raised her gaze to his, and the breathless smile on her face threatened to send him to his knees. “This is magnificent.”

“It is,” he said, his own breath coming harshly.

She shook her head. “I never think of the rooftops.”

He extend

ed his hand to her. “They are the best way to travel.” She settled her hand in his, giving her trust over to him before he led her from one building to the next, down a long, curving city street, up and over the roofs, from ridge to ridge, around chimneys and over broken tiles.

“Where are we going?”

“Away,” he said.